So here I am--summer before my Junior year of college, and spending my first summer away from New Jersey. This blog will chronicle my summer as well as my new project: The Recycle, Reuse, Redesign Project where I try to redesign the old until it looks new!

Monday, April 26, 2010

"Human House" by Ryuichi Tamura

I've decided to post another poem I like. I read this one a few years ago, and I've quoted it again and again for various things. It's by a Japanese poet Ryuichi Tamura and this is a translation. There's another poem by Ryuichi Tamura that I really like, but that'll be for another day.

Human House

I guess I'll be back lateI said and left the housemy house is made of wordsan iceberg floats in my old wardrobeunseen horizons wait in my bathroomfrom my telephone: time, a whole deserton the table: bread, salt, watera woman lives in the waterhyacinths bloom from her eyeballsof course she is metaphor herselfshe changes the way words doshe's as fre-form as a catI can't come near her name

I guess I'll be back lateno, no business meetingnot even a reunionI ride ice trainswalk fluorescent underground arcadescut across a shadowed squareride in a mollusk elevatorviolet tongues and gray lips in the trainsrainbow throats and green lungs undergroundin the square, bubble languagefoaming bubble information, informational information adjectives, all the hollow adjectivesadverbs, paltry begging adverbsand nouns, crushing, suffocating nounsall I want is a verbbut i can't find one anywhereI'm through with a societybuilt only of the past and futureI want the present tense

Because you open a doordoesn't mean there has to be a roombecause there are windowsdoesn't mean there's an interiordoesn't mean there's a spacewhere humans can live and die-so far I've opened and shutcountless doors, going out each oneso I could come in through anothertelling myself each timewhat a wonderful new world lies just beyondwhat do I hear? from the paradise on the other sidedripping waterwingbeatswaves thudding on rockssounds of humans and beasts breathingthe smell of blood

Bloodit's been a whileI'd almost forgotten what it smells likesilence gathers around a screamon the tip of a needleas he walks slowly toward methe surgeon puts on his rubber glovesI close my eyes, open them againthings falling through my eyesboth arms spread like wingshair streaming out full lengththings descending momentary gaps of lightconnecting darkness and darkness

I rise slowly from a table in a barnot pulled by a political slogan or religious beliefit's hard enough trying to find my eyesto see the demolition of the human housethe dismemberment of my language

My house, of course, isn't made of your wordsmy house is built of my words